I can't imagine how I'm going to be able to function with this degree of pain day in and day out but I'm completely done with narcotics and I'm already feeling better and happier than I have in years.

If the pain is injury-related? Eventually--and it takes many years--it just becomes part of the background of daily life. That doesn't mean it gets easier, nor lessens in severity. And bad weather always makes it flare up more, even for days on end. But, you just eventually learn to work around it. (And I'm assuming the pain is not fully debilitating.) There'll be bad days, and you'll come to see "good days" as any day that's not a bad day.

On the bad days, hey, there's nothing wrong with admitting it's bad, and doing what has to be done to cope with that.

It does become possible to find happiness, again, even with chronic pain. As you get used to it as part of your life, it becomes easier to find things that bring happiness. The pain, itself, might not fade, but its importance and dominance of your life fade. That's when it becomes easier to bear, and easier to focus on things other than the pain.

That's the best I can offer, I'm afraid. It might not seem terribly helpful or hopeful, but, in a strange way, it kind of is. We're amazingly adaptable, even to scars, injuries, or other damage that, for whatever reason, cannot heal completely.

I really don't know what to tell you if the pain is from disease, such as neuralgia, neuropathy, or cancer; I haven't experienced those. But I do have a leg that is bent, twisted, and mis-shapen due to a car wreck in my teens. And, due to the fact that the damaged leg is now shorter than my other leg, I also have chronic lower back pain from even such activities as just walking and standing. It was sometime in my late twenties that the pain from my leg and back stopped being the first thing I noticed every morning and stopped dominating my life and stopped making me perpetually angry. That was over a decade after the injury, and I was young enough at the time of the injury that my bones were still growing a little bit.

It may not be much I can offer you, Finn, but, my experience gives me hope for most folks' ability to learn to live with pain, should that be our lot._________________I am only a somewhat arbitrary sequence of raised and lowered voltages to which your mind insists upon assigning meaning

I hope to be playing it soon! It was totally and completely unavailable starting in December and going through today.
I could have printed out the free set, but those aren't the right shape, so the expansion packs wouldn't work with them.

Dead Prez coming to Gothenburg, playing for free on Mayday. I am so fucking excited already._________________A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? ~Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I can't imagine how I'm going to be able to function with this degree of pain day in and day out but I'm completely done with narcotics and I'm already feeling better and happier than I have in years.

If the pain is injury-related? Eventually--and it takes many years--it just becomes part of the background of daily life. That doesn't mean it gets easier, nor lessens in severity. And bad weather always makes it flare up more, even for days on end. But, you just eventually learn to work around it. (And I'm assuming the pain is not fully debilitating.) There'll be bad days, and you'll come to see "good days" as any day that's not a bad day.

On the bad days, hey, there's nothing wrong with admitting it's bad, and doing what has to be done to cope with that.

It does become possible to find happiness, again, even with chronic pain. As you get used to it as part of your life, it becomes easier to find things that bring happiness. The pain, itself, might not fade, but its importance and dominance of your life fade. That's when it becomes easier to bear, and easier to focus on things other than the pain.

That's the best I can offer, I'm afraid. It might not seem terribly helpful or hopeful, but, in a strange way, it kind of is. We're amazingly adaptable, even to scars, injuries, or other damage that, for whatever reason, cannot heal completely.

I really don't know what to tell you if the pain is from disease, such as neuralgia, neuropathy, or cancer; I haven't experienced those. But I do have a leg that is bent, twisted, and mis-shapen due to a car wreck in my teens. And, due to the fact that the damaged leg is now shorter than my other leg, I also have chronic lower back pain from even such activities as just walking and standing. It was sometime in my late twenties that the pain from my leg and back stopped being the first thing I noticed every morning and stopped dominating my life and stopped making me perpetually angry. That was over a decade after the injury, and I was young enough at the time of the injury that my bones were still growing a little bit.

It may not be much I can offer you, Finn, but, my experience gives me hope for most folks' ability to learn to live with pain, should that be our lot.

The pain is from chronic migraines. They are what my neurologist refers to as a transformed migraine, meaning that while classic migraines are primarily vascular these are neurological. They are a result of both physical damage done to the pain pathways by a lifetime of frequent classical migraines and a conditioned hypersensitivity to noxious stimuli which is also a result of a lifetime of the more traditional, vascular-type migraines. There doesn't seem to be too much we can do to solve the problem, but right now I honestly don't care if they ever go away or not. I am just so happy to have broken the control that those narcotics have had over my life that even in pain things are already looking so much better.

I will be driving to Seattle Wednesday to spend the day with Patty and Erika. Mostly to make sure they stay off my lawn._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

And also because I like them. _________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

And Erika's husband. Erika's been implying he and I should hook up for a while._________________"Worse comes to worst, my people come first, but my tribe lives on every country on earth. Iíll do anything to protect them from hurt, the human race is what I serve." - Baba Brinkman

Your cabbies here are kinda shit. The one today yelled at Patty for not getting in the curb side door but yet he had it locked. Then he was so busy lecturing us that he neglected to turn on the meter for two blocks. LOL! This guy would never hack it in Chicago._________________Eureka00: "Reminding you of your addictions" since 1982.

But I'm so psyched to actually be working again... you would not believe._________________The older I get, the more certain I become of one thing. True and abiding cynicism is simply a form of cowardice.